News Release Lots of Reasons to Laugh at Sketch-22 Friday, July 16, 2004 Back (Press Release Index) The Guardian, July 16, 2004 by Charles Mandel Yo dawg! Anne Shirley was busted out of the Potato Warehouse (as the Confederation Centre was once known) and hustled down the street to the Arts Guild where she's rapping up a storm. Sounds pretty unlikely doesn't it? Well, one of the many highlights during Sketch-22's largely hilarious show is that of the renowned red-haired orphan rapping "Will the real Anne Shirley please stand up," to the thumping beat of Eminem's "Will the real Slim Shady please stand up." Irreverent? You bet!And very funny too. Certainly, the nearly sold-out house at the Arts Guild thought so. Resplendent in a track suit with a blonde Anne wig (dyed that way for more of the Eminem look), comedian Graham Putnam frantically raps about Anne of Green Gables. Putnam is one of five comics who make up the Charlottetown comedy troupe Sketch-22 which turns a jaundiced eye on Island life and mixes it with a pop culture sensibility to come up with a sharp and satirical look at the place we call home. Putnam, along with funny guys Andrew Sprague, Josh Weale, Matthew Rainnie and Robert MacDonald, enjoy testing the limits in this 90-minute show. The first sketches are fairly conventional, mostly stand-up routines on such familiar fodder as giving tourists directions ("Look for the house all decked out with Christmas decorations - it ain't there no more.") and the lack of cultural diversity ("I love to sample all the ethnic food. Hey! Have you been to Swiss Chalet?"). From there, the proceedings take a sharp turn into the surreal with Putnam making an appearance as a lascivious, aggressive piping plover, a sight that will likely give bird-watchers nightmares for years to come. Although Putnam's plover is silly, it's also very funny, as he picks a fight with a beach-goer and then taunts: "You can't hit me. I'm endangered." Not all of the action is on stage. The group has also put together several videos, parodying various television shows and which are broadcast on a screen adjacent to the stage. The Bobert Diaries casts Putnam as a P.E.I. National Park ranger, taking its cues from the reality show Cops. Joe Stamps is a take-off on Average Joe with Sprague telling three of the cast members (who are dressed in drag), "One of you will be coming home with me to be the ultimate welfare woman." Much of the humour is coarse, and some of it just crosses the line into pure bad taste. The Hollow, a skit based on the prison drama Oz and set in Sleepy Hollow, goes on a bit too long and is occasionally downright juvenile. Fortunately, that is the exception. For the most part, Sketch-22 is surprising and comic. Putnam steals the show again and again. His role as Death trying to make friends with an ordinary human kept everyone in stitches. "Would you like to catch a moving picture show with me?" he asks pathetically. But the others have their moments as well. Matt Rainnie, for instance, plays a motivational speaker from Tyne Valley in a skit that left the audience hooting. He delivered one of the evening's best lines when he said, "I've had three management jobs on P.E.I.: Little Christos, Polar Foods and Meteor Creek." Weale got big laughs with an imitation of his father, island storyteller David Weale. As the younger Weale droned out a folksy tale, a voice-over came on: "The Journal-Pioneer raves about Weale . . . he just keeps going and going and going. It's like he doesn't know when to stop." Generally, that wasn't a problem with Sketch-22. The only thing that kept going and going was the laughs. -30- Sketch22 Media Contact - Jason Rogerson, (902) 368-2392 / jason@sketch22.ca